tales from Korea

I’m happy and excited that I’ll be having a photography exhibition this month! It’s called “Days in India” and will display 9 prints at the Guillaume Cafe in Seoul. Please check below for details on the exhibition and how to get there.

Exhibition details

The exhibition will be held at the Guillaume Cafe from the 9th of July until the 30th of July.

The opening night is the 9th of July and will run from about 7pm to 10pm.

Wine, food and other drinks will be available, free of charge!

If you’re interested in photography, India, or joining the Flickr in Seoul group I suggest you come along to the opening, meet some people and enjoy yourself.

To get there

• Address: Gangnam-gu, Cheongdam-dong 88-37, Insung Bldg #101, Seoul 135-954, Korea
• Phone: +82 2 512 6701
• Email: contact@maisonguillaume.com

The closest subway station is Gangnam-Gu station on line number 7.
You can take bus #472 heading north from Gangnam-Gu station.
Look for the large Smoothie King and Burger King, go up the hill and it’s on your left.

The flyer

Many thanks to my sponsors Guillaume, 708 Art and my friends David, Youngdoo, Hyunyo and Mel for their support and advice during this period.

Update: The name of the cafe has been changed to “My Attic – Homemade Sandwiches”. She told us many people said the title doesn’t make sense so she changed it. I also offered to help correct any English mistakes, she was happy!

Jayeon said to me once, “Ahh you’ll never find any sandwiches in Korea, what are you gonna’ do?”, “I’ll survive… I guess”. I do love a nice sandwich, they were pretty much my staple food back home, but Korean food is great so I wasn’t too concerned about not being able to eat any in Korea. Turns out of course, we’re living in Bundang – an area considered to be very posh and upmarket. This is quite the case, especially in the next town to Sunae, called Jongja, there is a long street which has loads of European terraced styled restaurants, sandwich bars and cafes. The prices of sandwiches are generally pretty steep though, so I never bothered looking too hard. But a little while ago, a new place opened right beside our building in Sunae. Its name in English reads “Little My’s Attic”. I was wondering first, was it supposed to be “My Little Attic?” Or maybe her name is ‘My’ and so it was suppose to be “My’s Little Attic?” I still don’t really know. But the name is not so important, the food on the other hand, is!

We instantly liked the style and décor of the place – bench style tables with assorted and unmatched chairs, hand drawn black line sketches on the walls. Creeper plants on the roof and ceiling. It’s a comfortable and well-put together little place, so we tried it one morning for breakfast. It’s now turned out to be our morning breakfast place every weekend.

When Jayeon and I order something we always order two different things and then usually split the food 50/50, sometimes we even prefer each other’s food and swap it. It’s a fairly normal Korean thing to order something for yourself but it’s rarely just for ‘you’. The first time we ordered, we got the “My’s Club” – a cold sandwich and a hot one called the “Philly steak”. They were so damn delicious; not just a good attempt from a Korean place to recreate a sandwich, but it beats many places I bought sandwiches back in Ireland. When you order a sandwich you can also get a drink – Iced tea, Iced coffee (Or hot coffee) or a soft drink for an extra W1,500. This means the total cost for a sandwich and drink is about W10,000 (About 9 dollars). Yes, that’s expensive food for Korea, but let me tell you – it’s really worth it. We would also recommend the “Manhattan”, another great sandwich.

So it’s possible to still have the occasional western food that is really good, even better that you can find an indie cafe like this and not have to rely on American sandwich chains. Go Korea!